Key Takeaways
- A total of 129 K-5th grade students received tutoring from 79 tutors in ELA and math across the 2023-24 school year. The number of elementary students receiving math instruction increased from Fall to Spring, as did the number of sessions each student received on average.
- Elementary students consistently reported positive attitudes towards tutoring experiences across the 2023-24 school year.
- Tutors (preservice teachers) reported high levels of confidence in their instructional self-efficacy in selecting and implementing ELA, Phonics, and Math strategies during tutoring sessions, though they had mixed perceptions of their tutoring experience.
- Wittenberg’s tutoring program showcases how institutions of higher education can integrate a tutoring program into reading and math methods coursework for preservice teachers to promote hands-on field experience for future educators. It demonstrates how universities can have local impact by building rapport with surrounding school districts and fostering meaningful relationships with students in need.
In recent years, school districts across the U.S. have invested in high-impact tutoring as a promising approach to accelerate K12 student learning. Such efforts to scale tutoring have focused on design elements proven to be the most effective on student outcomes, namely consistent instruction from a trained tutor, integration with classroom instruction, tutoring informed by data, using quality curricula, and occurring at least three times per week (Nickow et al., 2024). Studies indicate that effective tutoring programs share these core characteristics, even while they vary in the types of tutors they employ, scheduling strategy, and in-person or virtual delivery model (Cortes et al., 2024; Robinson et al., 2024).
The state of Ohio has been active in advancing legislative efforts aimed at the implementation and long-term sustainability of high-impact tutoring, though most of its programs have been funded by temporary federal funding sources (see Appendix B for legislative action on tutoring). The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (ODEW) allocates funding to numerous tutoring initiates throughout the state. Such investments include partnerships with the Boys and Girls Clubs for students who reside in rural areas and Learning Aid Ohio for students with 504s and IEPs. In 2022, ODEW awarded $14.8 million in a statewide math and literacy tutoring grant to Ohio colleges and universities with teacher preparation or education programs planning to create or expand math and literacy tutoring programs for Ohio’s K-12 students in one-on-one or small-group settings. The state believed having preservice teachers serving as tutors in local school districts would provide direct field experience, community service opportunities, and incentives such as course credits and stipends for preservice teachers who served as tutors.
Wittenberg University, a small liberal arts college located in rural Ohio, received nearly $420,000 to support a two-year high-impact tutoring program. The goal of the university’s tutoring initiative was to promote content knowledge and self-efficacy for preservice teachers and provide tutors to accelerate K-5 student learning in reading and math during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. The program was designed to integrate tutor experiences with university course content to promote pedagogical knowledge, particularly for phonics, ELA methods, and math methods education courses.
This brief reports on year two of Wittenberg University’s in-person, high-impact tutoring program that provided reading and math instruction to 129 K-5 students across four elementary school campuses in two local school districts. Wittenberg’s case provides an example of how one university, with the appropriate infrastructure and coherence to support preservice teachers and faculty leaders, can provide tutoring to local districts. We draw on administrative data from both districts and tutor session and survey data to examine the following questions about program implementation:
- How did Wittenberg University implement high-impact tutoring in two local school districts during the 2023-24 school year?
- How much tutoring did students receive?
- How do the characteristics of the students who attended tutoring compare to those in the district overall?
- Did tutoring dosage vary by student characteristics?
- What were the experiences of students? Did tutoring have an effect on their feelings about school?
- What were the experiences of tutors? Did tutoring increase their perceptions of tutoring and feelings of instructional self-efficacy?